The year begins to speak to me
quietly as my own breath—
have I confused myself
with what’s around me?
Am I just the time of things again?
Whatever the word is,
the year is speaking.
Young winter, mild sky.
Everything is prophecy.

2.
I begin to feel again
like the self you know.
And I am here for you,
so at least I have shown
up for work on time—
that’s the good kind of year.

3.
He swept away liturgy
he rolled away the stone.
Come in and sit down
in the dark and know your mind
he said and then come out again
and make the world happy
one by one.

4.
I think of that now,
the calm of the inner room
where we learn to be
and do something useful
with our being. And what
a wonder is a simple door.

5.
Mystery is a white tree
up the road,
a road is a riddle.
So many friends have
walked into the sky,
amazing how their voices linger
or I feel them almost at my fingertips.
Tree on a hill,
sky hidden in the sky.

6.
If you’re so smart, she said,
you could dance in your dreams
where feet are nimble
and syllables count themselves
up and down the famous steps
the Viennese set such store on.
By now she’s lost me, I’m stuck
yet again trying to find a name.
A name not mine. Or not mine yet.

7.
When it comes
it will sound at first
like language
then as you listen longer
it will seem music
and finally silence.
But your hands feel
as if there’s something
firm and clean in them,
an oval lapis perhaps
or a flower bulb but
you look down and they’re empty.
But the word has been spoken.

2 January 2021